The Rebalanced Paladin!

[Username17]

As the tank your goal is to soak stuff during the surprise rouind and during the time when your party has lost initiative. Now, sure, your offense isn't as great as the wizard, but that doesn't mean you wont' get attacked beacuse monsters may not know your offensive output. You don't run around with a big sign on your forehead saying "paladin". For all the monsters know, you could be a cleric.

And for all they know, you could be a commoner. Yes, when the party gets jumped in the surprise round, damage gets distributed in a weighted random fashion. The guy in front and the guy in back take more attacks, but how many more is situational. Some attackers target the middle even.

The thingis, your attacks add to the rest of the party's attacks to prevent your opponent from making additional attacks. But your defenses don't add to the defenses of other PCs to keep them alive. Your defenses just keep you alive. You are getting probably your fair share of attacks directed against you, and the enemy is going to be doing something offensive most of the time.

Combats in D&D last about four rounds, D&D parties are about 4 characters. Having enough offense to eliminate your opponent in 3 rounds instead of 4 is a 25% reduction in enemy attacks. In short, having even a decent offense is mathematically equivalent to being completely invulnerable!

Defenses are only even potentially good if they do one of the following:

• Protect fellow party members.
  
• Fall on "scout" characters who can reasonably expect that they will be the only character from time to time.
  
• Come with "taunt" effects that can proactively force your opponents to interact with the defensive ability.

So Evasion is a decent defensive ability and Divine Grace is not. Stinking Cloud is an epically awesome defensive ability and Resist Nature's Lure isn't.

In fact, the only really great defensive abilities in the game are spells. Magic Circle provides defensive bonuses and categoric immunities to the entire party. Stinking cloud negates the attacks of multiple enemies regardless of who they were going to target with them. Force Cage removes 100% of the offensive capability of an enemy and always works. And so on. The only effective defensive specialist in the game is a Wizard.

And if you don't understand why that is, you have no business writing a defensively oriented class.

-Username17

[RandomCasualty]

1165600558[/unixtime]]
Combats in D&D last about four rounds, D&D parties are about 4 characters. Having enough offense to eliminate your opponent in 3 rounds instead of 4 is a 25% reduction in enemy attacks. In short, having even a decent offense is mathematically equivalent to being completely invulnerable!

Huh? How do you figure?

Defenses are only even potentially good if they do one of the following:

• Protect fellow party members.
  
• Fall on "scout" characters who can reasonably expect that they will be the only character from time to time.
  
• Come with "taunt" effects that can proactively force your opponents to interact with the defensive ability.

What you're missing is that defenses don't have to be all or nothing. Just because your defenses are good doesn't mean your offense totally sucks and the enemy can just easily overlook you. The paladin can still dish out a decent amount of damage. Not to mention if they try to avoid him, he can still take some AoOs as they go for the wizard.

No, it's not quite as good as save or dies, but then he's also more likely to survive a wail of the banshee ambush.

What you're trying to avoid in most cases is a TPK. That's the only thing that effectively ends the game. To get TPKed all your members have to die. It's nice to have someone who is hard to kill with save or dies as opposed to putting all your eggs in one basket and hoping that you don't get taken out by some sudden ambush.

[Lago_AM3P]

Combats in D&D last about four rounds, D&D parties are about 4 characters. Having enough offense to eliminate your opponent in 3 rounds instead of 4 is a 25% reduction in enemy attacks. In short, having even a decent offense is mathematically equivalent to being completely invulnerable!

In the regular 3.0E PHB, there's a joke in the initiative section that goes 'adventurers have a saying. It's good to strike first, but better to strike last'.

If your offense is so strong that you kill enemies without them getting a chance to strike back (such as from a teleport ambush) then that's the same as being invincible.

This, of course, is not always possible to set up. However, even if you have a decent defensive ability, it's usually better in almost any gaming system to be able to defeat your foes first. Being able to turn undead is generally way better than the ability to use a turn undead attempt to give yourself and your allies, say, a +4 bonus to AC against undead for a turn.

If you have nothing good BUT defensive abilities, it'd better be to the point where your comrades can survive longer against anything. A good offense will often increase the ratio of pain you can inflict to the opposition more than relying on a good defense. There's a lot of reasons why this is true and I'll be happy to explore them, but this is a rule for every single game I've ever seen. In fact, only D&D even comes close to the paradigm of using defensive abilities to protect other party members.

....

What you're missing is that defenses don't have to be all or nothing. Just because your defenses are good doesn't mean your offense totally sucks and the enemy can just easily overlook you. The paladin can still dish out a decent amount of damage. Not to mention if they try to avoid him, he can still take some AoOs as they go for the wizard.

That's usually not the case, however. It's really easy to have your cake and eat it, too. For example, being able to inflict blindness on your foes is one of the best defensive abilities ever. It makes it really hard for people you hate to hurt your party while giving them substantial bonuses to attack. A wizard, despite being paper thin, can wave his hands and generate illusions that are really hard to penetrate. The 'skeleton in an enclosed wall illusion' is classic. In both cases, being able to protect the party had almost nothing to do with the wizard's own ability to survive attacks.

And in the case of the paladin (both here and in the PHB) their offense really does truly suck. Paladins get almost ZERO in the way of offensive abilities over other classes. They get to add a mediocre amount of damage to a single roll once per round and can cast divine favor. That's... about it. The revision fared a little better, but seriously almost anything is better off then the paladins.

Yeah, a paladin can survive a wail of the banshee ambush. So the fuck what? A bard with improved counterspell can stop it from happening in the first place, regardless of his or her own defensive ability. And not only that, he can prevent other people from dying from it, too!

.....

If a party member dies, especially at low level, that's almost the same thing as a TPK.

People are really attached to their characters nowadays. No one likes seeing anyone die, especially for arbitrary reasons. That's one of the big reasons (I think) that Shadowrun 4th made stun damage so uber and lethal damage so shitty. And even in D&D, it's very hard to get characters raised. People often mock the supposed culture of resurrection in D&D but unless you're at a certain point in the campaign, getting a raise dead is hard to do.

If you're a defensive character and someone on your team dies, then you have failed. If they failed in the normal course of things because your class lacked the inherent ability to protect them as opposed to something like overwhelming odds or luck, then there's something seriously wrong with the class. This is especially true if your class can't protect them from something simple like hit point damage. This seems to be the case with the paladin here.

[RandomCasualty]

1166090260[/unixtime]]
Yeah, a paladin can survive a wail of the banshee ambush. So the fvck what? A bard with improved counterspell can stop it from happening in the first place, regardless of his or her own defensive ability. And not only that, he can prevent other people from dying from it, too!

Assuming he's not flat footed, which again requires that he wins initiative.

A defensive ability that requires you win initiative is largely irrelevant, because you could just be throwing an offensive ability instead. Frank is right that offense is better than defense is most cases. The strength of defense in my opinion is that it's a passive ability. You don't need to be able to use it. A paladin's saves are good even when he's caught flat-footed.

If a party member dies, especially at low level, that's almost the same thing as a TPK.

Low level quests really favor having tanks, because monsters tend to attack the guy in front because they don't know any better. Nor do they have any kind of area attacks or many ranged weapons. The best defense against a lowly wolf or giant spider is to simply put a big armored guy with a sword between you and the creature. And that meat shield theory actually works at low levels, unless your DM is excessivley metagaming his opponents.

If you're a defensive character and someone on your team dies, then you have failed.

Death is a normal part of higher level D&D. When you can res someone easily, the only thing you want to prevent is a TPK. Having a guy that survives that wail of the banshee ambush becomes damn important for that reason.

If one guy survives, he can get everyone else rezed, if nobody survives then the game just ends.

[Caedrus]

http://boards1.wizards.com/showthread.p ... [br]Please refer here for the updated Rebalanced Paladin.

I'm not going to keep this thread updated, since it's a pain to convert the coding and all that.

[Brobdingnagian]

Wow. I was so busy posting up my own Paladin rebuild that I missed this one. It would have made for some nice reference material.

A good go, I think, but there's a couple fundamental problems. Firstly, though those feats you've presented for the Paladin are very good as far as feats go currently, they still have the same basis as current feats, which means, unfortunately, that they fail. Have you read Races of War? The feats presented there are feats that are worth getting because they have a different basis from normal feats. Don't get me wrong here, I'm all in favour of what are essentially class-specific feats, so I'm not saying you should dump them, but simply redesign them based on the Races of War combat feats.

Secondly, spellcasting. Paladin spellcasting was all but useless to start with, and after scrolling through your spell list here, it seems you haven't done a whole lot to improve it. For my own Paladin, I made all spellcasting based off of Charisma, because one of the biggest problems with the class is MAD. I also gave my Paladin higher level spells. Judging from the way you have special abilities laid out, your Paladin seems to have the right levels of spells, but the spells themselves are still too weak to be of any significant use by the time he gets them.

Finally, Lay on Hands. Let's say that by level 20, a Paladin has a CHA score of 24, for a +7 Modifier. 20 x 7 = 140. 140 hit points a day at 20th level? I guess that's not bad. I mean, I've never actually played that high before, but it looks good enough. The problem is spending a bunch of those points on other abilities. Let's say... Panacean Touch to cure disease (20), Revitalising Touch to repair, say, 4 points of ability damage (another 20... on an unrelated note, does that also affect ability drain?), Refreshing Touch because your idiot Rogue buddy tried running in a heavy-armour disguise (another 10... and why hasn't he been blown up by a trap or something? Seriously.), Break Enchantment because the Fighter was controlled by an enemy Bard (30 more... of course, that's the core Fighter, not the RoW Fighter...), and finally Energising Touch to restore two lost levels to the Wizard because of those damn Nightshades (+20 again). So now we've got 20+20+10+30+20 to total up to... 100 points. That leaves you with 40 points of healing left. Mind you, all this would normally be taken care of by the party Cleric, and since he worships Heironeous, suddenly you've lost your entire role in the party. Even if he doesn't, he's still showing you up on a dozen levels, not the least being able to beat up Team Fiend better than you without Smite Evil.

I don't mean to be harsh. Really. The problem here is not that you want a balanced, useful Paladin. The problem is that despite those cool abilities and the rebalancing of the smite evil ability, you're still using the same Paladin in the PHB, which is really just the Cleric Lite, and therefore the suck.

I didn't read any other responses you may have gotten, because I wanted to make this post without bias. I have just now read some of the responses you've gotten, and no surprise, I agree with Frank Trollman. This class just won't work. My suggestion is to rebuild it from the ground up.

[Caedrus]

1172565558[/unixtime]]Wow. I was so busy posting up my own Paladin rebuild that I missed this one. It would have made for some nice reference material.

A good go, I think, but there's a couple fundamental problems. Firstly, though those feats you've presented for the Paladin are very good as far as feats go currently, they still have the same basis as current feats, which means, unfortunately, that they fail. Have you read Races of War? The feats presented there are feats that are worth getting because they have a different basis from normal feats. Don't get me wrong here, I'm all in favour of what are essentially class-specific feats, so I'm not saying you should dump them, but simply redesign them based on the Races of War combat feats.

Alright, I have read Races of War, but one of my goals with this was to make it something that could be easily adaptable to any game... and as a result, would use the normal feat system in D&D.

Secondly, spellcasting. Paladin spellcasting was all but useless to start with, and after scrolling through your spell list here, it seems you haven't done a whole lot to improve it. For my own Paladin, I made all spellcasting based off of Charisma, because one of the biggest problems with the class is MAD. I also gave my Paladin higher level spells. Judging from the way you have special abilities laid out, your Paladin seems to have the right levels of spells, but the spells themselves are still too weak to be of any significant use by the time he gets them.

They get much more useful spells at each level than they did before. It's still not *great*, but they're getting a higher caster level, and higher level spells (such as Heal, True Seeing, Freedom of Movement, or Divine Might. These spells are pretty useful, even if it's not as good as what a full caster would get). I'm pretty happy with where the casting is at now, except for a few exceptions.

Anyways, considering they got higher level spells, a better caster level, and basically a whole overhaul of their spell list, I don't quite see where you're going with "I didn't do much to help their casting." I know it's not powerful enough to make them like a Cleric, but again I never intended to make this class as powerful as the Cleric.

Finally, Lay on Hands. Let's say that by level 20, a Paladin has a CHA score of 24, for a +7 Modifier. 20 x 7 = 140. 140 hit points a day at 20th level? I guess that's not bad. I mean, I've never actually played that high before, but it looks good enough. The problem is spending a bunch of those points on other abilities. Let's say... Panacean Touch to cure disease (20), Revitalising Touch to repair, say, 4 points of ability damage (another 20... on an unrelated note, does that also affect ability drain?), Refreshing Touch because your idiot Rogue buddy tried running in a heavy-armour disguise (another 10... and why hasn't he been blown up by a trap or something? Seriously.), Break Enchantment because the Fighter was controlled by an enemy Bard (30 more... of course, that's the core Fighter, not the RoW Fighter...), and finally Energising Touch to restore two lost levels to the Wizard because of those damn Nightshades (+20 again). So now we've got 20+20+10+30+20 to total up to... 100 points. That leaves you with 40 points of healing left. Mind you, all this would normally be taken care of by the party Cleric, and since he worships Heironeous, suddenly you've lost your entire role in the party. Even if he doesn't, he's still showing you up on a dozen levels, not the least being able to beat up Team Fiend better than you without Smite Evil.

This problem has long since been fixed. Please refer to the current version, linked to in my last post. I apologize for not updating it here, but I'm too lazy to reformat for every board I posted on whenever I make an update X_X

I don't mean to be harsh. Really.

I honestly don't mind harshness. I enjoy a good critique. As long as it's not just stupid people ranting >_>

The problem here is not that you want a balanced, useful Paladin. The problem is that despite those cool abilities and the rebalancing of the smite evil ability, you're still using the same Paladin in the PHB, which is really just the Cleric Lite, and therefore the suck.

Uhhhm, you also have spellcasting that is a good deal more powerful (You're getting stuff like Heal now) and several times the healing capability, along with a few handy auras.

It's still not as powerful as the Cleric, but then again, I didn't design it to be. I was aiming more for the Crusader (and indeed, that's what it was playtested against). The playtesting we had on the Wizards Boards (done by several different people) had it come out fairly even with the Crusader at various levels.

[Voss]

1166120748[/unixtime]]

A defensive ability that requires you win initiative is largely irrelevant, because you could just be throwing an offensive ability instead. Frank is right that offense is better than defense is most cases. The strength of defense in my opinion is that it's a passive ability. You don't need to be able to use it. A paladin's saves are good even when he's caught flat-footed.

Alright, new here and all, but it seemed an interesting time to jump in.

A passive, constant defense is useful and all... but only when it applies. And even then, there are some mighty big holes in it. Reflex saves are still unimpressive (and beg to be cast, since 'guy in heavy armor' makes for an easy rock-paper-scissors decision). Nothing is funny than stranding a tank in a widened or sculpted Grease spell. Even if he can manage the save (which... at first level is likely to be a straight 50/50 at best), the almost inevitable failed balance checks puts him out of the fight.

And at high levels, of course, it becomes an utter joke. A plethora of 'Save: No' spells and/or summoned creatures (huge+ elementals are always a good choice- all the paladins class abilities are utterly useless, and his paltry feat selection probably isn't going to allow him to chew through the giant mass of hp + DR/-.

Low level quests really favor having tanks, because monsters tend to attack the guy in front because they don't know any better. Nor do they have any kind of area attacks or many ranged weapons. The best defense against a lowly wolf or giant spider is to simply put a big armored guy with a sword between you and the creature. And that meat shield theory actually works at low levels, unless your DM is excessivley metagaming his opponents.

What now? Eh? The goblin hunting party doesn't have bows/crossbows/whatever? And the wolves are going for the big guy in metal and not following thousands of years of instincts and going for the weak ones? Uh... right. Metagaming. It sounds like whoever is running your examples is metagaming in the direction of being soft on the party.

A meat shield can be useful in a Gygax style dungeon, but in an open environment, they tend to suck. Trying to meat shield in the face of 'wolf pack tactics' (which one would assume that your theoretical wolves would automatically default to) is nigh impossible.

Death is a normal part of higher level D&D. When you can res someone easily, the only thing you want to prevent is a TPK. Having a guy that survives that wail of the banshee ambush becomes damn important for that reason.

If one guy survives, he can get everyone else rezed, if nobody survives then the game just ends.

Yes... but to be fair, the survivor has to get away somehow, first from the remains of the encounter then all the way back to a safe place. A paladin is pretty much the least likely character to manage that (other than a fighter).
In the wail of the banshee scenario, you'd be better off with a party of almost any other mix of classes (barring fighter again) and just hoping that the law of averages will work out to someone in the party surviving.

[Captain_Bleach]

1165399483[/unixtime]]
[*] If you weren't kidding about the paladin spells, I will kill your family.

That was in really poor taste. Why do you get so worked up over a game?

[Judging__Eagle]

It's not the game, it's the fact that you allow yourself to believe that you made something that could be used in the game.

It's like creating a martial artist class that focuses on.... dealing melee damage with their hands; and nothing else at all. Then the mechanic used shows that this character will always deal less damage than anyone else his level using a normal weapon; let alone a magic one.

The paladin could seriously get Bard casting and he won't be a big caster; as a current PHB pally caster, you don't even notice your spells.

The Archivist does though, and he dumpster dives through your spell list for shit like Holy Weapon. Which he then casts as a 7th lvl character, not as a 14th lvl one.

[Captain_Bleach]

A large portion of gamers construct rules not for balance, but for implementing their fantasies of what they want their game to be like. The fact that this is a very large demographic is why many large gaming companies pander to their needs, while at the same time destroying game balance.

[Bigode]

Look, I can tell you Caedrus cared about balance when he wrote it, and still does; his problems with Frank are just because they've different views about it - Caedrus wrote stuff like artificer houserules for balance concerns, not "for cool" (not that he'd complain about the latter). Why don't you, troll, who pisses where you eat (going outta your way to insult Frank), stop being retarded about your notion of manners you don't seem to apply to yourself?

[NoDot]

As someone who also lurks on the WotC boards,

1196735369[/unixtime]]his problems with Frank are just because they've different views about it -

Specifically, they differ on where the classes should be balanced. Here, it's monster CRs and single-classed Transmuter Wizards. On the WotC forum, it's Rogues, Psychic Warriors (and perhaps Psions), ToB, Binders, and Warlocks.

[Bigode]

Yeah, I know; also, I'm not quite a lurker*, just someone with limited Internet access; you don't see me there, besides the low post count, because I'm called Flamewarrior there.

*: not that I've anything against lurkers ...

[Captain_Bleach]

1196735369[/unixtime]]Look, I can tell you Caedrus cared about balance when he wrote it, and still does; his problems with Frank are just because they've different views about it - Caedrus wrote stuff like artificer houserules for balance concerns, not "for cool" (not that he'd complain about the latter). Why don't you, troll, who pisses where you eat (going outta your way to insult Frank), stop being retarded about your notion of manners you don't seem to apply to yourself?

My previous post did not involve insulting Caedrus, nor do I recall doing so. I was just saying that not all gamers care about balance. If you thought that I was talking about him, I wasn't. Sorry if you got offended.

[Bigode]

While I've been too hasty to flame, I do get irritated at "A large portion of gamers construct rules not for balance, but for implementing their fantasies of what they want their game to be like", if it's used as an excuse for not bothering to balance a new rule. For starters, badly balanced content really can hamper a game (while taking such stuff personally is retarded, "my character doesn't matter" and "my character isn't challenged by anything other than a carbon copy" are grave and entirely possible concerns).

[Captain_Bleach]

I said I'm sorry.

[JonSetanta]

That didn't look like Bigode was making a personal statement against you, Cap'n.

[Captain_Bleach]

1197000787[/unixtime]]That didn't look like Bigode was making a personal statement against you, Cap'n.

I know, but he seems offended, so I am still apologizing.